


Safety Zone

by Scrawlers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Sibling hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: When Shizuka's parents get into yet another fight, she hides under her bed because it's the only place in the apartment where she feels safe. Fortunately, she doesn't have to hide there by herself for very long.





	Safety Zone

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few years ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here, just in case.
> 
> This takes place pre-canon, when Shizuka is five and Jounouchi is eight. Ōkatsu is the name of a plush wolf Shizuka has; the name is a play on the word "Ōkami" (wolf), and "Katsuya" (her brother), since Jounouchi won the wolf plush for her at an arcade. Additionally, I have Shizuka call him Katsu-nii once here because I like to think that’s what she called him when they were children.

Shizuka’s parents have been fighting for the past hour.

Her mommy started it this time, Shizuka thinks, because she brought up The Bills again. Shizuka doesn’t know what The Bills are, really, except for pieces of paper that come in the mailbox, but she does know that she hates them. They make her mommy upset, and then her daddy gets mad, and things always just get worse from there. This time, like every other time, Shizuka’s mommy started talking about The Bills, and then Shizuka’s daddy started saying bad words and yelling. And that was when Shizuka retreated to the bedroom she shared with her brother, and curled up beneath the bed with the blankets dangling over the sides and Ōkatsu clutched against her chest. The blankets keep out the light, but they also make the space beneath the bed feel like a little fort, like a safety zone. Even though her arm feels all tingly with the way it’s pinned between her body and the floor, Shizuka still thinks it’s better under the bed than outside of it, especially when her mommy and daddy yell so loud that she can make out what they’re saying even through the closed door and walls.

And that’s how her big brother Katsuya finds her, an hour after she hid there in the first place, when he crouches down beside the bed and lifts the covers up so he can peer beneath it.

“Shizuka?” he says, and he’s still wearing his school uniform, the one that makes him look all serious and grown-up (or at least more grown-up than he usually does in his shorts and t-shirts). He had closed their bedroom door behind him when he came in the room, but Shizuka’s heart still starts beating faster and her breath hitches in her throat, and she has to swallow hard before she whispers:

“Put it back down!”

Katsuya frowns at her, but then he lays on the floor so that he can crawl under the bed as well, the blanket dropping back down to shield them both when he does. Shizuka tries to scoot back to make space for him, but it’s hard to slide on carpet and so she’s not able to scoot back very much. She had left the light on when she first dove under the bed, and through the veil of the blankets there’s still enough light for them to see each other.

“You didn’t invite me,” Katsuya whispers, his tone accusatory.

Shizuka frowns. “To what?”

“To your blanket fort!” he says, and he gestures to the blankets dangling over the side of the bed. He’s bigger than she is, in size as well as age, and so it’s harder for him to fit beneath their bed than it is for her. But he’s managed it anyway, somehow, and this doesn’t really surprise her.

“You were at school,” she says back. “And—”

Something shatters in the living room before their mommy begins yelling again, her voice as high as it loud, like the shriek of an angry bird. Shizuka’s own voice cuts off in a squeak and she curls up into a tighter ball, holding onto Ōkatsu for all he’s worth. After a second, Katsuya scoots closer and puts his arms around her in the best hug he can manage in such a small space.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to be scared.”

“It was The Bills again,” Shizuka says thickly, sniffing. She doesn’t want to get tears or snot on Katsuya’s school uniform, even though he always says he doesn’t care and that it’s not like there haven’t been worse things on it, like mud.

“Yeah, what else is new,” Katsuya says. “But it’s okay, they’ll work it out.”

“What if they don’t? What if they’re mad forever? I don’t want them to be mad forever. I just want us to be happy like—like that family downstairs. Or the one on TV.”

“We will be.” Katsuya pulls back a little, though he keeps his arm across her shoulders, and Shizuka sniffs again as she looks up to meet his eyes. He’s smiling at her, and that’s the thing about her big brother: No matter how bad things get, he’s always there to smile for her. Shizuka has a lot of favorite things about her big brother, but she thinks that this one might just be her  _most_ favorite thing. “We’re gonna be a happy family even better than the family downstairs, I promise.”

Shizuka has seen Katsuya break more crayons and pencils than she can count, has seen him accidentally break dishes by dropping them and their mommy’s flower vase when they played tag inside that one time, and just last year she saw him break his arm when he ran out of the apartment too fast because their daddy was mad and he tripped and fell down the stairs. But in all five years of her life, no matter what else he broke, Shizuka doesn’t think she has ever seen him break a promise. So she believes him, and she smiles as she hugs him back, her hand bunched up into a little ball around the back of his uniform shirt, and Ōkatsu squished between them.

“Thank you, Katsu-nii,” she says, and squeezes him a little tighter as she hears something slam in another room of the apartment.

Katsuya’s hug tightens a little around her, too. “Always, sis,” he says. 


End file.
